


Won't You Be My Neighbor

by PenguinMerchant



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Lamen is almost entirely offscreen, M/M, Nikandros POV, if you want angst...don't look here, seriously it's just fluff, so literal fluff as well I guess, using dogs as coping mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-15
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-22 14:35:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30040182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PenguinMerchant/pseuds/PenguinMerchant
Summary: Nikandros has already seen a fleeting glimpse of his and Damen's new neighbor. Blond, lithe, and scathingly loud enough that even inside their kitchen Nik could hear him bitching out his missing movers with just a hint of a French accent—the subtlest lilt on the way he hits his 'r', a cadence that might almost be alluring except that he's using a vocabulary so creatively cruel and unceremoniously vicious that Nikandros had nearly staggered under the intensity of it.The danger to Damen was immense. That had been his first thought.His second was that they were going to have to move.
Relationships: Damen/Laurent (Captive Prince), Laurent & Nikandros (Captive Prince)
Comments: 37
Kudos: 139





	Won't You Be My Neighbor

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks once again to the brilliant minds over on the CaPri discord for coming up with this idea! You guys rock, and I hope I did it justice.

“Damen no,” Nikandros says when he gets a good look at his best friend, his resignation towards this situation sitting somewhere between exhausted and horrified. “You can't be serious.”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Damen says, in a tone that means that he knows exactly what Nikandros is talking about. “I'm just going to go over and introduce myself, see if he needs any help.”

“And that's why you felt the need to change into your flirting tank top.”

“This isn't my—I do not have a _flirting tank top,_ ” Damen protests, managing to sound both offended and guilty at the same time.

“Sure,” Nik says, rolling his eyes. “Let's pretend like we haven't known each other since we were both in diapers and that this black tank top you're wearing that's a size too small isn't the same one you wear whenever you go to the beach to hit on people there, or that it's not your go to tank top when you want to show off. Followed closely, I might add, by the white one that says “Sun’s Out Guns Out” on it or the purple one with the tiger. Go on. Look me in the eye and tell me.”

Damen blushes then, a clear declaration of guilt if Nik has ever seen one. 

“Like you haven't stolen my lucky tiger tank top to get laid once or twice,” Damen grumbles. 

“Not the point. The point is that you are wearing that with the express purpose of flustering the new neighbor who had the bad luck to move in next to you, the world's biggest flirt.”

“And next to you, the world's biggest buzz kill. Besides, I'm not doing it to fluster,” Damen says as the blush continues to creep up his face, the physical tell of his guilt betraying him once again, “and I'm not a flirt. I'm just friendly. And it's hot out, that's the only reason I'm wearing this. It's not like I'm going to offer to help him move in or anything, I just want to introduce myself. Be neighborly. You can come too, if you want.”

It's an offer that's meant in all sincerity, because Damen could hardly do otherwise, but Nik can hear the trepidation behind it, the deeply buried hope that he won't _actually_ accept, and that Damen will be free to go and flirt and flex his ridiculous biceps in peace, without Nik's disapproving stare weighing the whole thing down.

But he has already seen a fleeting glimpse of their new neighbor. Blond, lithe, and scathingly loud enough that even inside their kitchen Nik could hear him bitching out his missing movers with just a hint of a French accent—the subtlest lilt on the way he hits his 'r', a cadence that might almost be alluring except that he's using a vocabulary so creatively cruel and unceremoniously vicious that Nikandros had nearly staggered under the intensity of it. 

The danger to Damen was immense. That had been his first thought. 

His second was that they were going to have to move. 

For a few moments he had hoped that Damen would exhibit little to no curiosity about their new neighbor, but of course Damen's natural instinct for finding every blond in a fifty meter radius of him was on point--as usual--and all it had taken was one look out the kitchen window before he turned without a word to go find the nearest available flirting tank top that was clean. So Nik can hardly let him go alone, defenseless and clearly already half smitten and vulnerable as always, and he sighs as he throws on a pair of sandals and follows his best friend out the door. 

By the time they make it out front the new neighbor has retreated to the street and is leaning casually against his moving van, a Uhaul truck with a swarm of snakes painted on the side and an infographic about Manitoba, Canada informing all unfortunate souls who had the bad luck to read it about the annual snake sex orgy that takes place there. Wonderful. Nikandros hadn't ever given it much thought but he had always assumed that there weren't any snakes in Canada, given the cold, especially not in large enough quantities to warrant making them the unofficial representative of Manitoba, and then briefly wonders if it's not an infographic so much as a prophetic warning about the owner, whose eyes narrow as he spots the two of them walking towards him. He pushes himself off the truck and slinks over to meet them with a cool gaze and a wary countenance.

“Hi,” Damen says, bounding up to the slim, young, infuriatingly attractive blond man. The man's frosty exterior melts a little under the warmth of Damen's smile, and then a little more as Damen extends a beefy, muscled arm in greeting.

“My name's Damen. This is my best friend and roommate Nikandros,” Damen says, emphasizing the word “friend” just a little too much to be purely innocent, and still shaking the man's hand in a gesture that's lasting a little too long to be purely introductory. "We live next door. We're your new neighbors!" 

“Charmed,” the man says, dryly, sarcastically, and Nikandros knows then with a certainty that settles uncomfortably like a half digested corn dog in his stomach that the rest of the evening will be spent with Damen obsessively recounting every moment of this interaction, waxing poetic about the man's blonde hair and sapphire blue eyes and ignoring the obvious way that he looks at the two of them, like he's doing advanced math in his head to figure out the best way to squeeze every ounce of use out of them.

“So,” the man says, and it looks like he's come to the (correct) conclusion that Damen is the weak link to exploit here because he focuses the full force of that blue eyed gaze on him. “Are all those muscles you've got out on display just for show, then? Or are you going to be a gentleman, and offer your services?”

Damen sketches him a loose bow, which Nik cannot help but roll his eyes at. The blond man's lips quirk up in something that might almost be considered a smile, but is more likely just ill concealed glee that his goading had worked. 

“My services are entirely at your disposal,” Damen says, to no one's surprise. 

Damen very purposefully does not meet Nik’s gaze as the man opens the back of the Uhaul with a great clatter, exposing what looks to be an inordinate amount of boxes labeled “books”.

“You should probably start with the smaller ones,” the man says, gesturing towards the stack of boxes labelled “decor”. He picks up one of the larger book boxes himself with surprising ease, and gives the two of them--and Nik is sure that Damen has the same befuddled expression as he does--a knowing smirk. 

“Try to keep up,” he admonishes as he steps lightly down from the truck.

Nik grabs Damen’s arm before he can reach over to grab the biggest box in the truck by himself.

“You said we weren’t going to help him move in,” he says.

“You don’t have to help,” Damen replies, smiling broadly. “I’ll take the full force of his gratitude if you want to go home, don’t worry.”

“That is _exactly_ what I’m worried about,” Nik grumbles, as he grabs the smallest box he can see.

* * *

The man’s name is Laurent, as it turns out. A fact that they learn only after a few hours of moving boxes; apparently he deemed his name a reward sufficient enough to bestow upon them only after they had put in a substantial amount of work for him. They had to move the couch three times--once out of the truck, and then twice again in the living room as he decided where he ultimately wanted it--before he graced them with his job, a part time professor at the local college and an author working on his fourth book, apparently a fairly popular series. When Nik had told him he had never heard of him or his books, Laurent just looked him up and down in a frankly rude manner and said he wasn’t surprised, as he didn’t really seem like the reading type.

Nik already hated him. 

Damen, predictably, was infatuated, probably because his mother hadn’t told him she loved him enough as a child, or simply because he was a glutton for punishment--which actually made a lot of sense, given how the whole thing with Jokaste had worked out and how he had ignored every single warning every one of his friends had given him--and he took each drop of information that Laurent dangled in front of him with a desperation akin to a parched wanderer finding water in a desert.

“Damen no,” Nik says that night as they stumble back home, his feet aching and his muscles sore from all the boxes he had hauled. “You _can’t_ be serious.”

He hates how pleading his voice sounds. He hates that this is the second time he’s had to say this today.

And Damen swoons onto the couch gracefully, an arm thrown over his eyes, likely to block out the disapproving glare that Nik is sending his way.

“I’m in love,” is the half dazed response.

“You just met him.”

“Did you see his eyes? They were like...the kind of blue after there’s been a rainstorm, and the sky is clean and crisp and clear.”

“Oh my god, spare me. He’s our neighbor, Damen. Haven’t you ever heard the phrase, 'don’t shit where you eat'?”

“There will be no shitting,” Damen says, sitting up suddenly like this was an important proclamation that needed to be said with dignity. “But yes, there might be some eating.”

“Oh _god_.”

“Did you hear when he said I looked like I should be on the cover of a fitness magazine?”

“I don’t think he meant it as a compliment, Damen. Don’t you think he was a little too willing to take advantage of your hospitality?”

“He can take any kind of advantage of me that he wants,” Damen says, grinning like an idiot, and even though Nik wants to throttle him right now he can’t stop himself from smiling back and so he turns away and hopes that Damen hadn’t seen him crack. When he finally has himself under control he turns back, glaring. 

“You always fall for this, Damen. Remember how Jokaste--”

“Oh god, don’t bring her into this, Nik. Trust me when I say I learned my lesson about people like her. Laurent is nothing like her.”

And Nik thinks that maybe that isn’t quite true, that they are more alike than Damen wants to believe and not just physically, either--both of them had that same uncanny sense of knowing exactly what made someone tick, and both of them had the same lack of character that allowed them to exploit that knowledge to their own benefit and damn the consequences to anyone else.

“Don’t worry, Nik. I won’t do anything stupid, I promise. I’ll wait at least, like, a week or so to ask him out,” Damen says. 

And that is not acceptable.

And so Nik decides to interfere.

* * *

Nik isn’t a good liar, and he never has been. 

Neither is Damen, for that matter; Nik’s half convinced that if the two of them had grown up together as feral children (well, more feral) they would hardly be able to recognize the idea of what a lie was, let alone be able to use it with any sort of believability. There’s something just inherently cowardly about lying, and personally Nik has never been in a situation that couldn’t have ultimately been better resolved if everyone had just been open and honest about their intentions and their wants, and so he strives to live up to that paradigm of virtue whenever he can.

This situation with Laurent is not, he thinks, one of those paradigms.

Because Laurent is not someone who is going to play fair. He’s underhanded and he’s sly, and the only decisions he makes that shape his actions are the ones that benefit him personally. Even though Nik’s only known him for a day he already knows that someone like Laurent would never go to bat for a friend, would never stand his ground in a fight, would never take a hit to protect his own sense of morality. And so if Nik wants to win--and he does, not for himself but for Damen--then he will have to stoop down and fight Laurent on his own level.

Which means he’s going to have to lie.

But so it’s not like Nik’s on completely foreign territory, here. He avoids lying whenever he can, and certainly about big things, important things, but he’s not exactly a saint. He’s told little white lies before, has skirted that line between objective and subjective truth in order to get out of a bad situation, but he tells himself that it’s always been in the service of a better cause and so he thinks that it might be forgivable. The first time he and Damen had gotten drunk he had told his mom that he didn’t _know_ where that water in the vodka bottle had come from, and if it had been him who had switched out those two liquids he certainly would have come up with a better lie than _that_ \--and his mom had believed him. Mostly because, Nik was certain, she didn’t want to accept her son had come up with a tale that stupid. And when Damen was heartbroken after he had broken up with his girlfriend in college--Kyra, Kara, something like that--Nik had told his professors that he had a family emergency to take care of, which really wasn’t too far from the truth even if he didn’t correct his professor’s assumption that someone was in the hospital. 

So it would be an easy thing to sell just a few little white lies to someone like Laurent-- _especially_ because it was someone like Laurent, who was probably so busy caught up in thinking how great and smart he was that he wouldn’t even consider a lowly pleb like Nik would dare tell him anything except the truth. And it’s not like Nik’s going to try and sell anything major anyway; all he needs to do is convince Laurent that Damen has less than desirable traits, and to likewise convince Damen that Laurent is going to be more trouble than he was worth. He’ll just drop a few embellished anecdotes to Laurent about Damen, maybe about how he never cleans the house--he hasn’t _once_ removed every item in their house so that he could dust every nook and cranny--about how he has to be nagged to do the dishes--when it’s not his day to do them and Nik doesn’t want to bother--about what a flirt he was--and that part was true, actually, so Nik wouldn’t even technically be embellishing anything there. He would use anything he could think of to make Damen sound like he was an undesirable partner. 

And then the deed would be done.

What possible complications could there be to something as easy as that?

* * *

  
  
The next day when there’s a knock on the door Nik answers it, as he’s the only one home at the moment--Damen is off at the grocery store, doing the week’s shopping--and when he opens it and sees who’s standing there, he has to hide his grin.

Laurent.

Perfect. Time to get started. 

“Oh,” Laurent says, as if he didn’t expect Nikandros to answer the door at his own goddamn house. “I was hoping I could talk to Damen.”

“He’s not here,” Nik says, and briefly considers telling Laurent he’s out on a date, except it’s early Sunday morning, which would be a weird time for a date, and he’s not entirely sure that would dissuade Laurent from pursuing his friend anyway. Maybe he liked chasing after unavailable men; that was certainly a favorite pastime of Jokaste’s, so it would make sense.

“I can tell him you stopped by, though, if you like,” Nik says instead. _Can_ , he thinks, but won’t.

But Laurent must have intuited the semantic difference Nik was thinking in his head, somehow, because his eyes narrow as he stares him down.

“You don’t like me. Don’t bother answering,” he says, as Nik opens his mouth to protest--because it was true, he _didn’t_ like him, but he did have _some_ manners, and his mother raised him better than _that_ \--and Laurent pushes on. 

“I’m aware of how I come off sometimes, and I won’t apologize for it, or try to convince you I’m not the egotistical bastard you think I am. But I also think that Damen _does_ like me, and unless he was using a euphemism yesterday when he told me you were roommates, I think you don’t really have any say in the matter.”

“I do so have a say,” Nik says, thrown--a little--off of his battle plan. He had been so adamantly anticipating a sneak attack from the side that had forgotten to fortify his front guard, and Laurent had surprised him.

“So it was a euphemism then?” Laurent asks when Nik doesn't continue, his pale blond eyebrow lifting up, arrogant to the extreme in his presumptuousness. “Or no. Maybe you just want it to be more than that. Maybe you’ve had your eye on him, but he doesn’t see you that way, and you keep hoping that if you keep him away from everyone else he’ll eventually turn to you--”

“That’s not it,” Nik interrupts loudly, an attempt to stop Laurent from continuing that line of thinking, something that couldn’t be further from the truth. Damen was like a brother to him--more than that, maybe, since he had seen first hand the cruelty that Damen’s brother was capable of--and he loved him as if he were family. He has the startling realization that dissuading Laurent is going to be an entirely different affair from what he had anticipated. A few scattered hints about the dishes are not going to be enough to convince Laurent to leave them alone; he’s going to need something much, much bigger than that.

Which means that he needs to sell an honest to god lie. And it’s going to need to be a big one.

“So--”

“He’s my ward,” Nikandros blurts out.

Well. It was a big lie, certainly. 

Not, perhaps, as believable as he would have liked. But he could work with it.

“Your ward,” Laurent repeats, and Nik has to suppress a wince. It sounds even stupider repeated back to him, and his mind races as he tries to come up with a good cover story.

“I’m sorry,” Laurent says, sarcastic to the extreme. “Please forgive my intrusion, then. I was unaware that Damen was an eighteenth century orphan.”

“Wards are a thing,” Nik says, because he can’t really see any respectable way out of this other than doubling down. “You know, like a ward of the state? Well, Damen is my ward. I am charged with keeping an eye on him. It's my responsibility--my legal responsibility--to make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid or illegal.”

Unfortunately, that was closer than the truth than Nik wanted to admit. And maybe because of that it looked like Laurent was starting to believe him, against all odds.

“It was either that or let the state take him, after what happened last time,” Nik says, feigning what he thinks is a believable amount of concern. He’s even sort of warming up to this thing. Was this what being a lawyer felt like? “Anyway, don’t worry about that. He hasn’t done anything that crazy in a while. Hey, you aren’t thinking of keeping gas canisters around your property, are you?”

“No,” Laurent says, and he looks a little shocked now, and maybe even genuinely worried, and Nik has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling. “Who keeps gas canisters littered around their property?”

“No one anymore,” Nik says seriously. “Not after--you know what, it doesn't matter. It really shouldn’t be an issue. And besides, we’ve got all of those locks on the shed now, so he can’t get at the tools. But you should be locking those up anyway, you know? We don’t have a lot of theft problems here but it’s better not to tempt fate."

“I...suppose,” Laurent says, and then pauses, opens his mouth and then closes it again like he’s stumbling around his words, which is strange, because yesterday Nik wouldn’t have suspected that he was capable of that sort of normal human behavior. 

“I have… a nephew," he says, as if admitting this piece of personal information was akin to admitting government secrets under torture. "He was going to be able to visit me, now that I have my own place. And I have…a dog. Should I--do I need to--" 

And for the briefest second his face crumples into something so vulnerable and scared that Nik almost repents for everything right there. 

And, okay. He wants to make sure that Laurent doesn’t get his claws into Damen, won’t be able to break him open and leave him wounded and bleeding, but he also doesn’t want to completely ruin the man’s life, and so he’s got his hands up in a conciliatory gesture already before he even consciously decides to step this whole thing back a pace or two.

“No, no no no no,” Nik says, and he knows that this part will be more than believable because it’s nothing less than the absolute truth. “Damen would never hurt another person. Ever. And he loves dogs, trust me. Cats too, pretty much any animal under the sun. He nearly drowned last year at the beach when he swam out to save a dog in the surf. It turned out to be a seal, but still. He would never hurt another living creature and he never has, I promise you that. He lands more on the property damage side of things, trust me.”

And that was true too. Damen had broken the door trim after installing one of those pull up bars and trying to do too many pull ups at one time, and they still hadn't fixed the damage he caused. Nik could always use that as proof of...something, if it came to it.

“Oh,” Laurent says, letting out a deep breath. He nods his thanks, relief written plainly across his features. “That’s good to know. Aside from all the potential arson and tool stealing he sounds like a pretty good guy.”

“He can’t cook for shit either,” Nik says, just in case Laurent’s threshold for potential partners is ‘not an animal killer’. “And he’s always nagging at me to do the dishes, so. You know. He’s not that great.”

Laurent huffs. 

“Right. I’m just going to go,” he says, and pauses. “And--don’t tell Damen I came over.”

“No problem,” Nik says, completely truthful once again.

“Oh,” Laurent says, right before turning away. He brings up a bag that had been tucked behind his back the whole time they were speaking; Nik hadn’t even noticed it until it's being thrust in his face. “These are for you. For both of you. For helping me yesterday.”

Nik takes the bag and opens it up, peeking inside to see a dozen or so chocolate chip cookies. They look to be home made.

“Oh,” Nik says, closing the bag. For some reason this feels like another sneak attack, except he can’t exactly imagine what the benefit to Laurent would be. “Um, thank you.”

But Laurent’s already halfway back towards his house, and Nik’s not even sure he had heard him. He closes the front door and then grabs one of the cookies, briefly considering the notion that they might be poisoned, and then takes a bite.

It’s actually pretty good, and he doesn’t immediately keel over. So that’s got to be worth something too. He shrugs, even though no one’s around to see it, and then goes to hide the cookies in the cupboard so he can eat all of them later in peace.

* * *

It’s Thursday evening, and Nik and Damen are sitting on their front porch with Makedon, their neighbor from across the street. Makedon had lived in the neighborhood longer than Nik and Damen had been alive; he would come over sometimes on pleasant evenings and share his homemade moonshine with them, a truly disgusting drink that tasted like a blend of the worst parts of turpentine and gasoline and burned going down the throat in a way that convinced Nik it likely had some parts of both of those substances in the mix, and he would tell them the tallest tales of his heroic exploits as a child or, sometimes, his most famous battles as an adult.

The most notorious battle being, of course, his long standing feud with Old Gus.

“And so when I turned around, Ol’ Gus was right there, staring back at me with those beady little eyes of his,” Makedon says, taking a swig of the moonshine and grimacing. “And I raised that gun right in his face--”

“Makedon,” Damen groans, leaning back in his chair and using the opportunity to splash some of the moonshine out of the cup. It soaks into the deck and sizzles as it hits the wood. “Please tell me you didn’t shoot that poor opossum.”

“‘Poor opossum’?” Makedon growls, glaring at Damen. “Poor demon hell spawn, more like. You ever see a opossum come straight at your throat with all those pointy little teeth? Cause I sure as hell have.”

“Don’t opossums play dead when they’re confronted?” Nik asks, mostly just to rile the old man up.

“Not this little bugger, I’ll tell you what. He _serves_ death, is what he does, never played at it in his life. But anyway, back to my story. I had my gun on me, and as he came towards me to usher me into an early grave I shot him right between his goddamn little eyes.”

“Jesus,” Nik says, and takes a swig of the moonshine. He has a feeling he’ll need the buzz of it to get through the rest of this story.

“And you know what that little bastard did?”

“Died?” Damen asks.

“No,” Makedon says, shaking his head forlornly. “That little bastard looked right at me, like I had betrayed him. And then he coughed, and he spit the goddamn bullet out of his mouth and walked away like it was nothing more than a mosquito bite.”

“You’re sure you didn’t shoot Wolverine?” Nik asks, and Damen snorts.

“You think I don’t know the difference between an opposum and a wolverine, boy?” Makedon growls, and Damen laughs even louder. “Besides, never seen a wolverine this far south. They typically like it up north, in the cold. I ever tell you about the time I was trekking through the Canadian wilderness with nothing but a compass and the shirt on my back--”

“Hey,” Nik interrupts, before they’re regaled with a twenty minute story that’s taller than the Empire State Building. “I saw you working on your porch last week. You fix the hole that Gus made?” 

“That’s right,” Makedon says, seamlessly changing tracks. “Fixed it and made double sure he’ll not get in there again. I’d like to see the little bastard get through two inches of steel.”

“I hooe it’s made out of adamantium,” Damen murmurs.

“It’s the strongest steel plate sold to the public,” Makedon continues. “The guy who sold it to me said it would withstand a tornado so you can bet it’ll stand up to that little fucker’s pointy little teeth.”

“I dunno,” Damen says, sharing a look with Nik as he tries not to grin. “Doesn’t look that menacing from here. In fact, it looks like some mighty pretty lattice work to me.”

“Well of course I had to put the lattice in front of the steel plates,” Makedon says, as if offended Damen would question his taste. “I had to make it look fancy. Speaking of,” he says, glancing over towards Laurent’s house as the front door opens. “You guys see the new neighbor yet?”

“Yeah, we’ve seen him,” Nik mutters, earning a frown from Damen.

“He’s actually really nice,” Damen says, waving heartily as Laurent comes out the front door. Laurent’s cool blue gaze flicks over to them at the movement and then he turns away without reciprocating or acknowledging the gesture at all.

Makedon snorts.

“Yeah, I’m sure his ‘niceness’ is why you look like a kicked puppy right about now,” he says.

“He seemed nice,” Damen says, downcast.

And Nik knows he shouldn’t feel bad about it. If Damen is already this enamored with someone without even barely knowing them then it stands to reason that he needs someone else to help him toughen up a little, and that what Nik is doing amounts to a favor, not a betrayal.

But still. He stomach gives a little twist of displeasure. 

It's probably the moonshine.

Laurent closes the front door behind him and ignores the three of them as much as he’s able to, and when he finally steps out Nik can see he’s got a little dog on a leash. A pit bull, if he knows his dogs, a little on the small side and exceptionally nervous looking. She starts at every sudden noise, every time a bird takes off, every time a car drives by, and spends most of her time sniffing every possible thing she can get her nose into. Laurent is patient with her but they don’t go any farther than the street before turning back and going back inside. 

“Strange little dog for a strange little man,” Makedon says once they’re both back inside. 

And that was as good of an opening as Nik was going to get. He clears his throat and prepares his newest lie. 

"He mentioned his dog to me the other day," Nik says as casually as he can, and when Damen turns a furrowed brow on him he hurries to add, "I was leaving for work when I saw them and said hi. He said something about what a pain it was to have to walk it every day, how he didn't think having a dog would be that much work."

"That's terrible," Damen says, his frown deepening. "And kind of weird. He seems like the kind of person who would do a lot of research before getting a dog, especially a breed like that."

Nik shrugs, only too late realizing that Damen’s right, and that Laurent was probably the kind of guy who read every review or piece of literature about something before committing to it. But he wasn't going to let that stop him, and he pushes forward.

"He said he only got the dog because one of his colleagues had one. It was very 'keeping up with the Joneses', you know? Said he paid a backyard breeder a fortune for it but was considering giving it up anyway because it was such a pain."

"A backyard breeder?" Damen says, the disgust in his voice evident. Nik knew his opinion on people like that, knew it would hit home; Damen's preference for shelters was well known to Nik, and he knew Damen’s opinion on people who abandoned their pets.

"Man who won't take responsibility for a dog...that's not a good person," Makedon says, and Nik's grateful for the backup, even if it was unintentional.

"You're probably right," Damen says, sighing dramatically. "I just thought that he seemed like...well, forget it."

Nik and Makedon share a glance, and Makedon nods at him, grabbing his bottle of moonshine.

“All right boys, time for a top off,” he says, spilling the liquid into their still mostly full cups as they both groan. “And time for a story. Did I ever tell you about the time I took a shortcut through the wood and was charged at by an angry buck?”

And soon Damen and Nik are laughing along to Makedon’s ridiculous story. But Nik doesn’t miss the quick, furtive glances Damen sends over to Laurent’s house, and by the time Makedon leaves them for the night he's not certain he can blame the twisty feeling in his stomach on the moonshine. 

Not entirely, at least. 

When he goes to bed that night sleep doesn't come easily, and his dreams are plagued with snakes--but the snakes have his own face on them, not Laurent's, and he wakes feeling not rested at all. 

* * *

  
  
It’s dumb luck that a few days later Nik is the one who checks their mailbox, instead of Damen. Damen is working late and Nik is waiting on a package (which hadn’t arrived) but so he's the one who comes across a piece of mail intended for Laurent, delivered to the wrong address. To prevent Damen from offering to do it and potentially mending fences--or finding out lies--he takes it over to Laurent’s house himself to correct the mistake.

“Here,” Nik says without preamble when Laurent answers the door. “You’ll probably want to put your name on the mailbox. The mailman is pretty blind and does stuff like this all the time.”

“Thanks,” Laurent says, taking the envelope with little interest. He's looking at Nik with that calculating gaze again though, like he's trying to best work out how to get any sort of use out of him, and his mouth hardens into a sharp line.

“Come in,” he says, opening the door. The tone he delivers this in isn’t an invitation, but a command. Nik, embarrassingly, finds himself complying with the order before he can really think about it. He steps inside--and stops.

“You’re completely unpacked,” he says, looking around at the immaculately designed living room. No one on earth would have guessed that a person had just moved in less than a week ago; the walls are painted a classy deep blue color, with bronze light fixtures brightening up the space. Immaculate mid century furniture--some of which Nik had helped move--makes the room look like a show room, except it also looks lived in, with small touches of personal effects scattered throughout--an open book on the couch, little figurines on the shelves, a framed picture that was so badly drawn it had to have been made by a child. Expensive looking artwork is hung meticulously throughout the space, and one wall holds nothing but bookcases filled to the brim with books that look like they’ve all been read at least once.

“Of course I’m unpacked,” Laurent says, closing the door behind him. He looks offended. “It’s been almost two weeks since I moved in. I’m not a heathen.”

Nik thinks of the box of junk that is still in his room three years after moving in, and says nothing.

“How do you feel about dogs?” Laurent asks him. 

“What?” Nik asks, startled at the non sequitur.

“Dogs,” Laurent repeats patiently. “You know, furry little creatures with four legs? Man’s best friend?”

“I know what dogs are,” Nik says, frowning. “What I’m confused about is why you’re asking me.”

“Because,” Laurent says as he makes his way through the living room and into the kitchen. Nik gets the feeling he’s supposed to follow, so he does. “I want to introduce you to my dog. But if you don’t like dogs, I won’t bother.”

“I like them well enough,” Nik says. “Although if it’s true that dogs take after their owner I can’t imagine it will be an especially pleasant meeting.”

“Lucky for you I’m not her owner, then,” Laurent says smoothly, and if he’s offended by Nik’s remark Nik can’t tell. “She’s a foster dog.”

“Oh,” Nik says, a little taken aback. He remembers the lies he had told Damen about Laurent regarding his dog, and feels his gut twist in protest. “That’s...that’s a very nice thing to do.”

“I do so enjoy surpassing your wildly low expectations of me,” Laurent says dryly. “You don't have any dogs, do you?”

“No. We haven't had a dog since we were both little,” Nik says. “Damen and I used to work a lot when we moved in together after college. Then we partied a lot. Not enough time to properly take care of a puppy, you know?”

Laurent hums, more amusement than agreement, and opens the door to the backyard. It looks pretty much like he would expect it to--a few trees, like their own backyard, but instead of a pool Laurent just has an open expanse of green lawn. A large, well constructed dog house and dog run sits near the fence, and the gray pit bull with the little white stripe on its nose that they had seen Laurent walking the other day sits on the threshold, happily gnawing on a giant bone. 

“Stay,” Laurent says, as if Nik is also a dog. “And don’t move until I tell you.”

“What in the world--”

“Petal,” Laurent says, walking slowly towards the pit bull. She looks up adoringly at him, tail thumping against the wooden doghouse floor, and now that Nik is closer he can see that she’s only got one eye, as well as a few scars across her back that are entirely healed but still look rather recent. When Laurent gets close to her she gets up so that she can receive pets--and then her eye catches on Nik. She makes a little whimpering sound that breaks Nik’s heart and slinks her tail between her legs, retreating back into the doghouse.

Laurent sighs. 

“I was afraid of that,” he says, kneeling down. He puts out a hand and holds it in place, and after a moment a little snout appears from the darkness and a hesitant tongue darts out into the light before retreating again.

“Okay, we’ll try something else,” Laurent says, moving a few feet away from the doghouse and sitting down on the grass. “Sit down in front of me.”

“Do you ever ask nicely for anything?” Nik asks, annoyed, although he does as instructed and sits, for the dog’s sake more than anything.

“ _Please_ ,” Laurent says. Nik gets the feeling that he’s never said that word without some amount of sarcasm in it. “Just pretend she’s not there. Let her approach on her own terms, if she wants to. And if you think you can manage it, please try not to radiate your displeasure towards me for at least five minutes. We need to convince Petal that you’re not a threat.”

“A threat?” Nik says, and then thinks of Petal’s one eye. He makes sure he’s speaking softly when he talks again. “Why would she think I’m a threat?”

Laurent leans back, tilting his face towards the setting sun. Nik figures that even at dusk it’ll only take a few minutes for that lily white skin to burn to a crisp, and he can probably pretend to be sociable for that amount of time.

“Petal’s a rescue dog,” Laurent says eventually. “We--I mean, not me personally, although I did have a minor part in it--we saved her from a fighting ring. She was a bait dog.”

“Her eye,” Nik says softly. That would explain the scars as well. He feels anger bubbling up inside of him at whoever would put such a gorgeous animal through that, and then consciously releases it. Dogs could sense that sort of thing, he knew.

Laurent nods. “Yeah. They said the only humane thing to do when they busted the fighting ring was to put her down because she was so terrified of everything, but some people who were there who knew me told them I would take her in. I've got a lot of experience working with traumatized dogs, of being able to rehabilitate animals that everyone else has given up on, and I was the only one willing to even try with her. So I’ve been working with her for about six months and she’s been doing beautifully, like I knew she would. I had been hoping to have her adopted out by the time I moved, but I didn’t think she was quite ready yet and so she’s still here with me.”

“And seeing as how she was scared of me…” 

“Yeah. Still not ready. Although I suppose there’s always the option of adopting her out to women only, or at least someone not so...brutish.”

“You know, for two seconds you had me convinced you weren’t completely terrible, and then you have to go and say stuff like that,” Nik says, fighting back the urge to scowl.

But Laurent’s smiling again, and Nik realizes that his statement had been, perhaps, a joke. Not a good one, but still.

“Plus it’s really hard to have to make up new adoption paperwork,” Laurent says. “‘Brutes need not apply’, that sort of thing.”

“Really it seems like that should already be on the form,” Nik says.

“Implied, maybe,” Laurent concedes. He glances over towards the doghouse, and Nik tries to look too, without moving his head. Petal’s got her paws on the edge of the doghouse, and it looks like she wants to come out, but her ears are still pressed flat against her head and she still looks terrified. 

“They always tell us not to judge a book by its cover,” Laurent says, talking softly, his voice a little lighter than Nik was used to from him. A concession to the dog, he knew, and not to him. “Which is ridiculous, really. Do you know how much thought and money is put into book covers?”

“I guess I never really thought about it,” Nik says, even though he suspects the question is rhetorical.

“It’s a lot,” Laurent says. “And it’s there for good reason. If you’re looking for a sci fi book you’re going to pick the one with a spaceship on it, not the one with a beachfront cottage. And if you’re looking for erotica you’re going to pick the half nude male torso, not the Amish woman in a field. Those tropes exist for a reason, and that reason is to help people find what they’re looking for and avoid things they aren’t.”

“But then you’ll miss out on some great things sometimes,” Nik says. “That’s the whole point of the saying. The world’s best science fiction book might not have a spaceship on the front, and you won’t know because you only look at books that look a certain way.”

“Sure,” Laurent says, nodding. “That’s the danger, right? And when the consequences to that danger are reading a book you don’t care for, that’s fine. But when the consequences for ignoring those sorts of patterns are getting beaten and starved to within an inch of your life, you begin to take a little more care with interpreting those patterns.”

“Ah,” Nik says, using every ounce of will in his body not to look over at Petal, not wanting to scare her again.

“She doesn’t mean anything by it,” Laurent says, shrugging. “And it’s not your fault you look similar to the guys who ran the fighting ring she was rescued from. It’s your build, mostly, and that's hardly something you can control. I mean, maybe it’s a little your fault. You could probably stand to do something a little more appealing with your wardrobe.”

“Listen here, blondie--”

“But she’s just trying to make sure she stays safe. It’s a valid response. I can’t say I wouldn’t--or that I haven’t--done the same, under similar circumstances.”

“Oh,” Nik says, and then, even though he knows Laurent doesn't deserve his apology, “I’m sorry.”

Laurent shrugs, a small, elegant gesture. 

“I’ve long ago come to realize that dogs are far superior to humans. We wouldn’t be wrong to try and act more like they do. For instance, I’ve found that dogs are far more willing to forgive past transgressions and move forward with a clean slate than I am.”

Nik sees something move out of the corner of his eye, and he turns to look.

“Don’t,” Laurent says gently, and Nik swings his attention back over to Laurent. “Keep talking to me. Pretend she’s not even here.”

“To make her feel more at ease,” Nik says carefully. 

“Yes. She’s all the way out of the doghouse now. Go on, let her get used to your voice.”

“Okay. I don’t really know what to say,” Nik says, keeping unnaturally still. His leg is cramping and he wants to stretch it out, but he doesn’t dare move in case it scares Petal.

“You said that you had dogs when you were little,” Laurent says, leaning back again. "Tell me about them." 

So Nik does. About Kipo, his mom’s bichon frise they had when he was a toddler who hated everyone with a passion except for her. And Dash, a chocolate lab that he had been given for his sixth birthday that ran like the wind, and how he and Damen would chase that dog around the neighborhood for hours until all three of them were so exhausted that they would fall asleep in a pile in the backyard, sometimes using the dog as a pillow, sometimes the dog using them as one. He tells Laurent about how one night when it was raining Damen found a little beagle wandering around looking lost and scared and how they had taken him in and fed him and dried him and played with him until the rain had stopped, and how Damen’s mom had forced them to go around and ask for the owner, whom they eventually found three blocks away. Damen and Nik had been crushed, as they had already gotten attached and named the dog--Thor, Nik remembers--even as they had started to make wild plans for all the adventures they would get in together. They had both just turned eleven, their birthdays only three weeks apart, and Damen cried so hard once they got home. Nik and a now elderly Dash who didn’t dash so much anymore both sat with him and cried and howled as well until his mom had come up with a fresh batch of pizza rolls to console them. 

He hadn’t thought about that in years.

“You guys sound like you were really close,” Laurent says when Nik stops.

“We are really close,” he says, a little defensively. “Damen is my best friend.”

“And now you’re his caretaker. Benefactor. Guardian. Whatever. That’s got to change the dynamic between the two of you.”

Oh. Right. That. 

“I--”

“Don’t move,” Laurent says, saving Nik from having to come up with a response to that. “Petal is right next to you.” 

“What should I do?” Nik asks in a whisper. He can feel the faintest snuffing against his arm, and he forces himself to stay completely still.

“Just breathe,” Laurent says. “Let her sniff. In a moment, if she doesn’t run away, you can try extending a hand to her, see if she’ll sniff that. Actually, here,” he says, reaching into his pocket--slowly, so as not to startle Petal--and brings out a dog treat. He hands it over to Nik, who takes it gingerly.

Making sure he telegraphs his movements he reaches over, slowly, letting Petal know in soothing tones that he’s not going to try to pet her or put hands on her. Holding the dog treat delicately between his fingers he extends his hand and waits; if she wants it, she can come get it, but he wasn’t going to force her if she was still too scared. She watches him warily with her one good eye and sniffs at him, and Nik tries not to look directly at her in case eye contact scares her. Or is that monkeys? He isn’t sure, but she is so close to taking the treat that he doesn’t want to risk it. 

And then--Petal lunges forward and snatches the treat out of his fingers. She runs back to her doghouse and sits down, only eating it once she’s safely inside. Nik is crushed, but when he looks over at Laurent he’s surprised to see that he’s smiling, a bright, dazzling thing, like he’s only just holding in a giggling, bubbly sort of laughter by sheer will.

“Is it that funny?” Nik asks, frowning.

“Not funny,” Laurent says, pushing up from the ground in a fluid, easy motion. He extends a hand to Nik but Nik pushes up on his own, and Laurent retracts his hand in an easy gesture. 

“I just...I never thought she’d be brave enough to take food like that from someone. Especially not from someone like you. No offense,” Laurent says, when Nik grumbles. “You're a stranger and very brutish, remember? But she must have trusted you. Dogs can always tell. You’re okay, Nikandros.”

“Really? Just because she took a treat out of my hands? Any dog would have done that.”

“Not any dog,” Laurent says, leading him back through the house and opening the front door. “And especially not Petal. But I trust her judgement, and if she trusts you then I will too.”

“You’d trust the actions of a dog over your own instincts?” Nik asks as Laurent opens the front door for him. He steps out onto the porch and actually has to look up at Laurent for once, standing on the threshold.

“Of course,” Laurent says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “I told you, dogs are way smarter than most people. They might even be smarter than me.”

“I saw a dog eating cat litter out of a trash can last week,” Nik says, rolling his eyes.

“Maybe that dog knows something we don’t. You should try it out yourself and let me know how it goes,” Laurent says with a wicked grin. “It’ll probably taste better than whatever you were cooking for dinner last night.” 

And then he closes the door without even saying goodbye, and Nik stands there for a moment, stunned, before he's able to gather his wits about him.

“I was grilling onions!” he yells at the closed door. There’s no answer, but for some reason Nik is certain that Laurent had heard him, and he smiles.

As he walks back over to his own house, still not entirely sure how going over to deliver Laurent’s mail to him had turned into them sitting on the grass for half an hour trading stories about dogs, he remembers, suddenly, that Jokaste had never liked dogs.

He wonders if that is important. His tummy grumbles at him, and when he tries to remind himself that he’s doing all this for good reasons, for honorable reasons, all he can picture is Petal’s one good eye, looking up at Laurent with all the devotion and trust in the world.

* * *

  
  


It’s nine o’clock on Saturday night and Nik is firmly snuggled in under blankets on the couch with a beer and snacks within easy reach and season two of Project Runway queued up on the TV. Damen had gone out for drinks with Pallas and Lazar earlier that night and wouldn’t be home for a few hours and Nik is looking forward to unwinding by himself after a fairly hectic week. He can hear the low growling rumble of thunder outside--a perfect dark and stormy night, and he sends up a brief thanks that he hadn’t accepted the invitation to go out. It’s going to rain soon, he knows, and his favorite place to be during a thunderstorm is warm and dry inside the house.

True to his prediction a loud clap of thunder sounds from outside before Tim Gunn can even give the contestants their assignment for the week, and while the power flickers briefly it comes back on just as quickly and Nik thanks his lucky stars that he'll be able to continue to watch his show in peace. He can hear the rain falling outside, as if the thunder had been the sound of the clouds opening up and dumping every ounce of water out of them all at once, and he fires off a quick text to Damen warning him about the weather outside and urges him to be careful.

Damen texts back a smiley face and a candid picture of Pallas grabbing Lazar’s butt, and Nik smiles and turns his attention back to the TV.

And then--a knock on the door. Nik frowns at the TV. The contestants are still picking out their fabrics at Mood and someone is knocking on his door in the middle of a rainstorm. He debates, for a minute, whether or not to even answer it. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s ignored someone at his door, especially at night, but for someone to come over like this when it’s raining like that outside...they might be in trouble.

And if someone is in trouble he doesn’t really have a choice anymore. He untangles himself from his blankets, pauses the TV and opens the door--to see Laurent standing there, dripping wet from where he’d walked over in the rain without so much as an umbrella. 

“Jesus, Laurent, what’s--”

“Petal’s gone,” Laurent blurts out. He looks frantic, more scared than Nik’s ever seen him, his tightly reigned composure having washed off with the rain. “I was bringing her in before the rain and then the thunder--and she bolted and I didn’t notice the gate--I chased her, but...I didn’t know who to go to--”

Nik closes the door without waiting to hear the rest of what Laurent has to say. He lunges for his keys and his jacket and then opens the door again to find Laurent still there, having not moved a muscle, looking completely lost. Nik gently pushes him out of the way so he can step out onto the porch.

“Okay,” Nik says, flipping on the porch light and locking the door behind him. “Let’s go find Petal.”

* * *

They decide to split up.

They can cover more ground that way, Nik argues, and Laurent agrees without even seeming to really hear him. The fact that he doesn’t put up even a token fight about it worries him more than anything, but having a plan, even one Laurent himself hadn’t come up with, seems to ground him a bit and soothe his nerves and so Nik isn’t worried that he’ll go crawl into a corner and hide or anything.

Like Petal was maybe doing right now. He picks up his pace a little, squinting hard in the rain. He wishes he had planned this a little better--picked up a flashlight, maybe, or at least a rain poncho--but if this past few weeks had shown him anything it was that he wasn’t as good at coming up with and sticking to his plans as he thought. And so he turns on the flashlight on his phone, pulls his not-waterproofed jacket a little tighter around himself, and he calls out for Petal.

And after searching this way for three blocks, completely soaked to the bone and his phone giving him low battery warnings, he’s about ready to give up. There’s a big tree just a few houses down from where he's standing and he goes over and huddles under it, enjoying the way the canopy saves him from all but the very largest drops, and he bangs his head against the trunk in frustration, sending a little smattering of water down on his head. It’s impossible searching for a small gray dog in weather like this; she could be two feet away from him and he wouldn’t be able to see her, and if she was hunkered down somewhere he might never find her. It’s just as likely that she’s already returned to her little doghouse in Laurent’s backyard and is just waiting for her owner to come home and take her inside.

But even still, he couldn’t bring himself to call off the search. Not if she was still out there.

And so he doubles back, re-checking the areas he had just gone through, ensuring he hadn’t missed anything. When he gets to Laurent’s backyard he sees that the back gate is still open; Laurent either hadn’t had time to close it or was intentionally leaving it open for her to use in case she decided to come back. Nik goes over to peek in the doghouse, but the light from his phone shows him it’s still empty. He sighs, remembering how Petal had cowered in there when he first saw her, scared and frightened...but how she had also been so brave, venturing out even though Nik reminded her of meaner men.

He goes back to the gate and looks out. There’s a small service alley behind their houses separating them from the back fences of the neighbors behind them, and Nik checks this area quickly for any open gates or crevices in which a small dog could fit. He finds none and turns around, heading back out to the main road. Petal would be scared after that big crack of thunder--she wouldn’t have liked the loud noise, Nik knows, because dogs generally don’t, but he thinks she would be especially vulnerable to them--but the rain was uncomfortable and would make her cold. Nik figures that she would probably want to find another place to hide as quickly as possible, both to get out of the rain and because it seemed like she found comfort in small spaces like that.

He looks across the street to Makedon’s house and to the porch that, despite all of Makedon’s machinations, could never quite keep a crafty little opossum from getting under it, and a little niggling sense of hope begins to flare in his chest.

The rain is lightening up a little bit, not that it matters much since every inch of Nik is soaked, but he’s grateful for it nonetheless as he checks out the steel plates that surround the bottom of Makedon’s front porch. The nice little lattice fence hides it pretty well, and the rivets used to attach the structure to the porch look pretty daunting--but sure enough there’s a corner of the barrier that has been pushed apart and away, the rivets popped and the steel gnawed away by something that surely had adamantium teeth, leaving a hole that’s just big enough for a fat old opossum to get through.

Or a small, one eyed dog. Nik puts an eye down to the hole and hopes to whatever god is out there that a feral opossum with mutant powers doesn’t shoot out and try to murder him.

When his flashlight catches the shine of a reflected eye--just one--he sags in relief. It’s Petal, crouched up against the meager warmth from the house, and as far away from the ripped up opening as she could possibly be. Nik couldn’t reach in there and grab her even if he wanted to--he knew better than to corner a dog like that, especially one with trauma like hers--and so instead of doing anything rash he sits by the opening, hoping that maybe, _maybe_ Laurent will walk by and will know what to do. He can’t really move too far; he doesn’t want Petal to slink out and hide somewhere else, and at least knowing where she’s at is better than nothing, even if she seems determined not to come out for now.

“Don’t worry, Petal,” Nik says, and he _thought_ that he was totally soaked through already but somehow the mud he’s sitting in feels even wetter than that. “I’m not going to leave you here alone.”

She answers him with a whimper, and Nik ignores the urge to stick his phone flashlight in there and look at her again. He needs to be calm, positive, just like he was that day Laurent had him talk about his dogs, about Damen and him as kids. And he needs Petal to hear his voice so that she knows she’s not alone, and that someone loves her and cares for her.

“I know you’re scared,” he says, settling into the mud and getting as comfortable as was humanly possible under the circumstances. This might take a while. “I can get scared of things too. Maybe not thunder--not anymore, at least, maybe I was when I was a kid, although I don’t rightly remember. I’m sure if I was scared of it Damen would still make fun of me today though, so probably not. I don’t blame you for being scared, though,” he adds hurriedly. “If I had experienced some of the stuff that you did, I’m sure there’s lots of things I would want to hide from too, including loud noises.”

No answer--predictably, she was a dog, after all--and still no sign of Laurent, so Nik sighs and continues.

“But I do wish you would trust me,” he says quietly. “Don’t--I’m not shaming you or anything, I get it, I really do. I would be lying if I said that I hadn’t done exactly what you’re doing a time or two. Well, not hiding under a porch. But the rest of it. People can be horrible, cruel monsters, and it makes sense that you'd want to hide away from all that. But there's also good people out there. Damen--he's my roommate, you haven't met him--he's as good as they come. You'd like him if you knew him, I'm sure of it. You couldn't help but like him. And...and Laurent. Who helped you the most when you needed help, and who took you in when no one else thought you could make it. And me. And I'm--” he sighs, and then tilts his face up towards the rain, letting the wet drops splash against his face.

“And I'm me. Sometimes good, sometimes bad. Mostly in between, I guess, and even though I think my intentions are good sometimes my actions aren't, and those are the things that really matter, in the end. But I'm not like those people who used you. Just because I look like them--like a brute, some less than polite people might say--it doesn’t mean we’re all the same.”

Nik laughs then, the sound startling out of him, less bitter than he feels right now. 

“Ah, I’m such a hypocrite. If you could talk, I’m sure you’d say that to me. But maybe you can sense it anyhow, maybe that’s why you’re hiding in there instead of--”

And he stops, because as wet as he is, he feels something even wetter on the side of his elbow. He turns, very slowly, and sees one soulful little brown eye looking up at him nervously, as if she was the one who needed to be forgiven and not him. He reaches over--again, so, so slowly--and this time, instead of scampering away, she leans into his hand, and for a moment they just sit there in the rain, Nik hardly believing that this is happening as she lets him scritch her ears.

“Come on,” Nik says, making space for her to come all the way out. “Let’s go home, Petal.”

And she does, in hesitant, slow steps, until she’s fully out from under the porch and settled into Nik’s lap. And as he reaches around to pick her up and take her home they both hear a low, rumbling growl come from under the porch that has nothing to do with thunder and has everything to do with a feral, possibly superpowered opossum. Nik looks into the darkness and sees two beady little eyes shining back at him, and it _is_ dark, so he can't be _entirely_ sure it isn't a trick of the shadows, but he can swear there's a tiny little hole right between his eyes, just about the size of a small bullet.

Petal and Nik share a look--a shared recognition of a mutual threat--and with a haste he hadn’t previously conceived of he scoops her up and runs. And either she’s much more tired than he had thought or he had just proven himself to her in some irreversible way because she doesn’t fight him at all, just cuddles into his shoulder. It’s probably because he’s warm, he reasons, but he still can’t quite shake the feeling that he’s been gifted something that he doesn’t fully deserve, and he doesn’t let go of her until she's safely home. 

* * *

  
  
The Saturday after the rainstorm from hell Nik is sitting on the front porch basking in the afternoon sunlight. This evening promises clear skies and absolutely no rain, and Nik is planning on making the most of it, meeting some friends for dinner, and possibly going to a concert later. Damen’s inside working on something or other and for now everything is quiet, and peaceful. Just the way Nik likes it.

A movement from next door catches his eye, and he looks over to see Laurent leaving his house, dressed to the nines. He’s got slacks and a nice button up shirt on, topped off with a fancy blue velvet jacket. A little warm for the afternoon they’re having, Nik thinks as he sits back in his plain t-shirt, but the outfit is just fussy and ostentatious enough to be perfect for Laurent.

Nik whistles at him, an obscene sounding catcall, and Laurent turns to say something probably terribly offensive--and then stops, when he sees Nik sitting there, and smiles.

“You sure look fancy,” Nik says as Laurent ambles over. “Big lecture tonight?”

Laurent scoffs. “It’s Saturday night, Nikandros. Believe it or not I have a date, thank you very much.”

“Poor sap. Who’s the victim?”

Laurent sighs, and grabs the beer Nik had been nursing from the side table and takes a big swig of it, then makes a face. He sets it back down with a disapproving stare. 

“I don’t know him, honestly. My brother set me up with someone he works with. He’s in accounting or something dreadful like that, but Auguste assures me he’s an upstanding guy.”

“Sounds like fun. Well, if I’m still here when you bring him home I promise I won’t do anything to embarrass you.”

“It’s a first date, Nikandros,” Laurent says imperiously, stepping down from the porch and heading towards his car. “I’m not that big of a slut. Are you going to say hi to Petal later?”

“I’m going out soon but yeah,” Nik says, finishing off his beer. “If that’s okay.”

“It’s okay!” Laurent shouts from the street. “Just make sure to close the gate!”

Nik raises his empty bottle to Laurent to let him know that he’s heard, and he smiles as Laurent drives away. He can’t say that he gets on better with Laurent than he previously had--well, maybe he could say that a little, but _only_ a little--and he knows that whatever friendship they might manage to eke out will always be a little antagonistic. But ever since he had found Petal the week before, Laurent had been adamant about him spending time with her, saying how good it was for her recovery to trust someone like him, and how she just generally seems to enjoy when Nik comes over to play with her. Nik makes sure he's always gentle with her and never moves too quickly, but he and Petal are fast becoming good friends and Nik figures that if he has to put up with Laurent for that sometimes, it would be worth it.

Laurent never brings up Damen. When Nik thinks about it too much his tummy starts to hurt, and so he tries to just never think about it.

And so Nik goes over to play with Petal for a little while, and after he’s thrown her favorite ball too many times to count and she’s drank all her water in her outside bowl he lets her inside the little doggy door Laurent had installed last week and locks it behind her. He lets himself out through the back, ensuring that the gate is securely locked behind him, and then heads back over to his house to get ready to go out.

And as he’s leaving for the night, not forty five minutes after Laurent had left for his date, he sees Laurent drive up, slam on the brakes and throw his car into park. When he gets out of his car he slams the door a little too loudly and he looks pissed, but not hurt, which Nik is surprised to realize is a relief, and he heads over to intercept him as Laurent stalks down his front path and then slumps onto his front step.

“Wow,” Nik says, watching as Laurent runs a hand through his perfectly coiffed hair, messing it up. “Stood you up, huh?”

“I wish,” Laurent says, laughing bitterly. “It was so much worse than that. He--” Laurent stops, and looks over at Nik with a critical expression. “Don’t you have somewhere to be tonight?”

Nik shrugs and sits next to him. “I always leave too early. And I’m not going to pass up a chance to hear about a terrible date. What happened?”

“Do you seriously want to hear what happened?” Laurent asks, narrowing his eyes. “Or are you just excited that something bad happened to me?”

“Can’t it be a little of both?” 

“Asshole,” Laurent replies, but he’s smiling, just the tiniest bit, and huffs out something that might be a laugh. “Fine. So my date was supposed to meet me at Tâste, have you heard of it?”

“Heard of it, yeah. Never been there. Super posh place downtown, right?”

“ _Super_ posh,” Laurent agrees, and before Nik can make a smart ass comment about how a place like that seems perfect for him, “It’s not really my thing. I can stand going to places like that when my publishers are paying for it, but I think it’s crass to go there on a first date. It’s a power move, and I hate games like that. Personally I’d rather go get burgers or tacos at some local joint for a first date, but whatever. That was already strike one.”

“I didn't think that you were a burger or taco kind of guy,” Nik says.

“Your lack of imagination will never fail to surprise me, Nikandros,” Laurent says dryly. “Anyway, my date was already there when I got there, and he seemed nice enough. But then we sat down and when the waiter came over he made a big show about paying for the entire meal despite me saying that I preferred we split it. So strike two. At that point I had decided to order the most expensive thing on the menu and then ditch him when I went to the bathroom, but then our waiter came back and asked us if we would like some wine. And she was obviously a new hire, and she was having trouble with some of the pronunciations of some of the more obscure wines which, I might add, she was reciting from memory.”

“Uh oh,” Nik says.

“So then she gets to recommending the wine of the day, Château Rayas Châteauneuf-du-Pape,” Laurent says fluently in expert French, of course, the bastard, “and she stumbles it a bit. Which is understandable, because French can be dreadful sometimes, but my date wasn’t having it. He made her repeat it, and she was so flustered that she mispronounced it again. And then he corrected her, and made her repeat it after him, and I could tell she was close to tears and he didn't care, and I just--”

Laurent’s fists clench at his side and Nik thinks he might be really angry; but then he laughs, just a short, clipped sounding thing, and the tension releases from him. He makes one of those elegant shrugs Nik is certain he must practice in the mirror and turns to Nik with a smirk.

“I ordered a glass of the cheapest wine they had. She brought it over and I asked her to wait while I tasted it. It was actually a pretty decent vintage for the price, honestly. And then I reached over and dumped the rest of it in my date’s lap, handed her a $50 bill while he was still spluttering around trying to mitigate the damage to his trousers and I told her to keep the change. And now I’m back home,” he says, gesturing towards his house, “and my intuition is telling me there probably won’t be a second date.” 

“I can’t imagine there will be,” Nik mutters.

Laurent pushes up, dusting off his pants. “It’s no big loss. I’d rather be single than be involved with a huge jerk like that. I don’t mind waiting for around for someone who meets all of my requirements in a good partner, and--”

“You should go out with Damen,” Nik blurts out. 

The two of them stare at each other for a fraught second and Nik really, really wants to regret saying what he did, but the knot in his stomach that he’s been carrying with him ever since Laurent moved in melts away at his words and he knows he’s made the right decision.

“Okay,” Laurent says slowly, looking at him like he had just announced a bomb was about to go off or something, “have you ever heard the phrase, don’t shit where you--”

“Damen’s an awesome guy,” Nik interrupts. “He’s honest and sincere and he would never say anything to a waiter that would make them cry. In fact, he always tips way too much, like fifty percent sometimes. He always signs those “Save the Environment” petitions that people hawk on the street, even though I tell him they’re usually scams. He crashed his car into a tree a few years ago because he was trying to avoid hitting a squirrel. He’s just...he’s a decent human being. And despite everything, it seems like you actually might be too.”

Laurent blinks.

“I’m sorry, was that a...compliment?” he asks, a smile creeping across his face. "About me?"

Nik puts up a hand to stop him, as if he could physically shield himself from the embarrassment of that statement.

“I am _not_ repeating myself on that account,” he says, frowning, “ever. So don’t even ask. And my opinion is subject to change based on how much of an asshole you’re being.”

“So is that the reason you’re doing this, then?” Laurent asks. “Because you think I’m a halfway decent person? Or do you just feel bad about lying to me about Damen being your ward?”

“What--you _knew_?” Nik splutters.

Laurent rolls his eyes in an overly theatrical manner.

“Of course I knew, Nikandros. Are you serious? Your _ward_? I’ve told some pretty insane lies in my day but even I would never be so bold as to try and sell that one.”

“But then--why did you act like you fell for it?” he asks, a little more desperate then is really seemly.

“Because,” Laurent answers, as if it’s the simplest thing on the planet. “If you were that invested in trying to keep me away from him I figured you had what you thought was a good reason for it. And I also figured that getting you out of the way would be more trouble than it was worth.”

“Like you even could,” Nik mutters.

“So I decided to step back, for your sake,” Laurent finishes, as if he hadn’t heard him. “And honestly because I didn’t want to get in the middle of whatever weird drama you were trying to start.”

“I wasn’t starting any--you know what, could you be chill for like two seconds?” Nik says, motioning for Laurent to follow him as he walks across the lawn to his own house. “I’m already regretting my decision to not consider you a fully venomous and evil snake.”

“A horrible decision, really,” Laurent says, but Nik can hear the smile in his voice, and he unlocks the front door to his house and walks in to find Damen lounging on the couch.

“Okay!” he says, loudly enough that he startles both Damen and Laurent. “I am going to say this quickly, and only once, and then I’m going to run away. Are you two paying attention?”

“Nik, what--” Damen starts.

“Damen, I may have embellished some of the things I told you about Laurent.”

“Wait, what were you telling him about _me_?” Laurent seethes behind him.

“And Laurent,” Nik says, turning and grabbing him by the shoulders and moving him over so that he had a clear run of the front door, “I'm still fairly certain you’ll be a terrible influence on Damen, but he also has terrible taste in partners, so it’ll be par for the course as far as he’s concerned.”

“Can someone please tell me what’s going on?” Damen says. “I’m very confused right now. And sort of offended.”

“And I’m going to meet some friends for dinner,” Nik says, his hand already on the doorknob. “I’ll be back in a few hours and I won’t be answering any questions about this now or in the future. Have a nice night!” 

Both Damen and Laurent look at him with slightly stunned expressions, which is the last thing he sees before he shuts the door in their faces. As he walks--or, more accurately, runs--out to his car he can’t help but add a little spring to his step, feeling lighter than he has in weeks.

* * *

Four hours later, Nik returns home. He had eaten dinner with his friends, had wandered around some local shops, and had basically just tried to kill enough time that he could be reasonably certain Laurent wasn’t still in his house. As he pulls into his driveway he wonders if he and Damen are going to need to come up with some sort of ‘sock on the doorknob’ system like they had in college to let the other know when not to enter, and then thinks that maybe it was time to really consider moving out. He had lived with or next to Damen all of his life and maybe it would be good for them to spend some time apart, spread their wings a little, and make out with questionable partners in the privacy of their own homes without the other one judging them. 

As if on cue, Laurent walks out of Nik’s house like he already owns the place and he smiles wickedly when he sees Nik walking up the path.

“Just the man I was hoping to see,” he says, planting himself in the middle of the path. Nik stops and glares at him, waiting for him to move, and Laurent’s expression softens a little.

“Thank you,” he says quietly. And then, at Nik’s slightly stunned expression, “I am aware of when someone goes out of their comfort zone to help me.”

“I figured you were aware of it, I just didn’t figure you were capable of expressing gratitude.”

“Very funny,” Laurent says dryly, and then turns serious. “I’m not--I haven’t ever been good at making connections with people. Not real connections, I mean. I can charm or swindle people into liking me if I want them to, but I never let people see anything more than that. But you--you helped me when I needed help. You found Petal when she was lost, even though you didn’t have to. And...I just want you to know that I consider you,” he pauses, as if searching for the right word, like he’s entirely unfamiliar with the concept, “a friend.”

“Wow,” Nik says. “There’s always a first time for everything, right?”

Laurent laughs then, a bright, easy sound. He looks extremely pleased, and Nik can’t help but smile back at him.

“I fear you’re more right than you know. I’m really glad I met you, Nikandros,” he says. "I hope whenever I meet the rest of my neighbors that they're half as nice as you. And as bad at lying as you are, for my sake."

"You mean you haven't introduced yourself yet?" Nik asks him, ignoring the barb. "You should, everyone's really nice."

"I've no doubt about that. I just don't think there's much of a point to it. Especially seeing as how they'll all know my name soon enough."

"Oh?" he says, and that uncomfortable feeling in his tummy comes back in force, grumbling a warning at him that he's too stupid to listen to. "And why's that, then?"

“Because,” Laurent says, and turns a devastating smile on him. “Soon they’ll all be hearing my name screamed from Damen’s lips. I figured there was no point in being redundant by introducing myself in person too.”

“Oh my _god_ ,” Nik says, groaning and hiding his face in his hands. “You're just the worst, Laurent, seriously. What happened to you not being a slut?”

“I said I wasn’t _that big_ of a slut,” Laurent says, and he looks like he’s just reveling in Nik’s discomfort. “But have you ever been kissed by Damen? That man knows what he’s doing. I have no defense against that kind of technical prowess.”

“I haven’t, point of fact, and I would appreciate it if we never talked about this again,” Nik says. “About any of this. Ever.”

“Fair enough. Can I make a suggestion, though?”

“As long as it doesn’t have to do with kissing anyone,” Nik mutters.

Laurent grins. “If you order some soundproofed headphones now they’ll probably arrive in time to save your precious ears. Assuming you have expediting shipping, of course,” he says, turning and walking towards his own house. "Oh, and don't tell Damen. He doesn't know yet that I've decided to make him the luckiest man in the northern hemisphere." 

“You could always just go to your place!” Nik shouts angrily after him, and Laurent shrugs like he hadn’t even considered it. Nik thinks that maybe since lying isn't his strong suit he should just be totally straight forward with his decisions from now on, and considers whether or not setting fire to Laurent's lawn would be an acceptable response to what he had just been put through. He’s about to open his own door--almost safe at home where he can either drink his fill of alcohol to get the mental picture Laurent has placed there out of his head, or maybe wash out his ears with soap, or hell, maybe both--when Damen comes out.

And as soon as Damen sees him he wraps him up in a big hug, almost picking him up off the ground, and only stops when Nik starts pinching his ribs to get him to release him. Damen laughs, and Nik’s heart constricts a little when he realizes how much he’s missed hearing that sound over the last few weeks.

“Listen, Nik, I just want to thank you,” he says, rubbing awkwardly at the back of his head. “Laurent told me everything,”--and at this, Nik beings to panic just a little--“and I really appreciate everything that you did for me.”

Nik blinks.

“You...do?” he asks, warily. He hadn't really considered what the fallout of Damen knowing everything he had lied about would be--telling the truth was really about him wanting to make things right, as much as he was able to, not about saving face--but having Damen thank him for it wasn't one of the options he had allowed himself to think on, and he's a little taken aback by it.

Damen nods enthusiastically. “Yeah, I really do. And listen, I know that after you confessed your feelings for Laurent he made it really clear that you two would never be together, but if you ever have a problem with it, or just can’t stand to see him around, you just let me know, okay?”

“I--what?” Nik asks, wondering if the red spots that are clouding his vision right now are important, or something he should see a specialist--most likely a therapist--about.

“Don’t be embarrassed,” Damen says quickly. “Obviously anyone in their right mind would fall in love with Laurent immediately, so I understand why you did. And why you kept it to yourself. But he said that you accepted the fact that you two would never be together and that you’re cool with him and I dating. That it was even your idea. You are cool with it, aren’t you?” Damen asks, his big brown eyes warm and pleading, for all the world like a little puppy who just wants to be loved.

And Nik knows that he could very easily torpedo this whole thing right now, that if he said he was uncomfortable with it Damen would drop it, and drop it forever, and for a second--the briefest second--he wonders if Laurent planned it that way, just to give Nik a last way out in case he wanted it.

Or he could just be showing off how easy it would have been to come up with something more believable than Damen being his ward. That seemed more likely, in all honesty. Nik smiles.

“I am more than okay with it,” Nik says, and claps Damen on the shoulder. Damen quite literally sags in relief, and smiles back at him. “And believe me when I say that I look forward to telling a version of this very embarrassing story at your wedding as your best man.”

Damen blushes fiercely at this, and runs a hand through his hair.

“Noted. Oh, by the way,” Damen says, holding the door open for Nik, “Laurent also told me the big news. I know you didn't want to say anything until it was certain, but I just wanted to let you know that I'm cool with it, like beyond cool, and that I'll support you one hundred percent no matter what happens."

Nik's mind races. Big news? Laurent could be putting him up to anything, from agreeing to finance his next book to volunteering him on the next flight to Mars.

And if there is one thing Nik's certain of, it's that he is in no way qualified to even guess at what insane ideas are floating around in Laurent's mind.

"Just so we're clear," Nik says as Damen shuts the door behind them, "you're talking about--"

"About you adopting Petal," Damen says. "Laurent told me all about how you two have been bonding, and how he was so glad you were going to be the one who adopted her, especially since it meant he could come over and help you whenever you needed. He was really excited about it, he was so cute the way he scrunched up his nose--"

Nik tunes Damen out. And through the fog of everything going through his head right now--the anger at Laurent's presumptuousness, relief that he wouldn't have to say goodbye to Petal when someone else adopted her, his surprise that he would have missed her more than he was prepared to admit, and then back to anger again when he realizes that Laurent had known all of that before he even knew it himself--he can't help but laugh, and he flops down on the couch next to Damen.

"--and his hair is really as soft as it looks," Damen finishes, and Nik smiles back at him, because he's glad he was able to ignore pretty much all of that without any follow up questions.

"Did he really say he was glad?" Nik asks after a moment.

Damen nods. "Yeah. He said he didn't think there was a better person out there to take care of her, and I had to agree with him. Because you are the best." 

"And I'm sure you weren't agreeing with him just so you could make out with him," Nik says, laughing as Damen turns bright red and looks every inch the love struck dork that he is. They watch TV for a while in a comfortable silence, and after a while Damen turns to him.

"I'm happy Laurent moved in," he says softly. "And I'm even happier that the two of you are friends."

"You know what?" Nik says, and there's no trace of a lie in his words at all, only the pure, unvarnished truth. "I think I am too."

**Author's Note:**

> Hey so I don't know if this needs it, but I am not a dog expert! I did some basic Google sleuthing and that's it, this is a work of fiction etc. Also I know nothing about wine, I just wanted something that sounded fancy lol I hope it was enough to convince at least some of you that I knew what I was talking about!


End file.
